Nothing that I can think of would be better than building a PB with however many plays, and then never getting ticked off when my AI didn't kick the FG, didn't go for 2, or called a bomb inside my opponents 15.

Can there be a human controlled play calling set up for online interactive play? This would be simply awesome, the ultimate as it is then truly coach against coach, and play design against play design.

This is by far the most pressing need for PMFB. Rather than spending countless hours trying to get my AI to work, it would be VASTLY superior if I could simply create my playbook and call my plays, head-to-head, with my opponent. I could scout the way real coaches do, add plays I thought worked, and then call them myself rather than pretending that the AI is somehow going to get these plays into the game at the right spot.

Let the user be the AI.

This one improvement should trump everything else, and actually should have trumped everything else for a long time.

Real play, head-to-head over the net.

If you read this Brian, you really should do nothing else until this works.

I will always go for 2 when appropriate, always kick the FG at the right time, always call the 2 minute offense when it's time, never call timeouts when I wouldn't, etc.. Rather than spend any of your time fixing the AI, let me use my RI and let me call the plays.

Net play or nothing. No other improvement means anything to me without this. Then, in the interest of live league play, let others 'watch' the game live over the net as well.

Live playcalling doesn't matter to me at all. The way we play the game now, uploading playbooks to a game runner and having our AI duke it out, is extremely compelling to me. I am absolutely fascinated by the process of creating both excellent plays and designing a gameplan to call those plays at the right time.

Live playcalling is an interesting feature - and should be included at some point - but it shouldn't be a higher priority than making the Team File and the AI more flexible.

Now bringing back the Game Film and making it cross Mac and Win platform would be brilliant.

Noone says you would have to suddenly call your plays live. But as an option, live playcalling would set playmaker above all the rest. The sims I have found that employ live playcalling are more skills of the thumbs, they are video arcade games. Every league in the playmaker community is looking to make everything they do more interactive. Simulcasted playcalling with live games, chat rooms, draft rooms... All an effort for interactive play. The one thing that is 100% non-interactive is play calling.

And if there cannot be live playcalling then for goodness sakes, artificial intellegence must some how allow groups of plays to be adjusted. If my opponent is putting 3 in the box, I want to call some runs, but it takes ages for the computer to come around.

On the other hand, A human coach can say... Well, if you are going to drop 8 or 9 into coverage, I'll just run the ball until you stop. Nothing that I can imagine would be more enjoyable than designing my own plays, and calling my own plays in the playmaker simulation. One of the coaches in the EFL plays in an office league, where it is all live calling of plays. They turn the play clock off, and go to town.

We really must discover if this is an option, One of the drawbacks in recruiting of new coaches is that the playmaker package is not apealing to them. The graphics are nothing incredible, the directions for use have not always been well understood or complete, and they have to program a computer for ways to call thier plays.

I agree with Ken. It would be a nice option to have. I imagine most leagues would continue the way they are but it still gives people other options not to mention coaching against buddies would be fun from time to time.

Ken is right on. There is no game out there that allows the user to make plays the way Playmaker does. You're either an arcade game that requires hand-eye coordination, or PMFB as it now stands.

The point though is realism, and realism in COACHING. When I want a play to be called, it is. How realistic is it for people to prepare for an opponent by running thousands of games vs. the opponent's playbook and then figuring out which plays to include in your next playbook? What is the analog in real football? There is none.

Playmaker's 'artificial intelligence' is really not AI, but rather a rule-based expert system that is really simplistic. It simply can't do that much. It's ok, but in the end it's a poor substitute for what happens in real football.

My real brain can do much better, and you don't have to write a line of code for it. I can tell when a play didn't work, WHY it didn't work and call it (or not ) again. PMFB just rates it down. I can call sideline plays in the last 2 minutes without 1 nanosecond of preparation before the game to make sure they get called.

PMFB is a coaches game. Leagues for PMFB exist that allow you to trade, and draft and other realistic things.

If I want realism, what I'd like to have is the ability to make my own plays, to trade and develop my own players, and the ability to call my own plays in a real game. My opponent would have no playbook of mine to prepare against, all he'd have is game films from previous contests allowing him to scout what I do.

At 4:00 pm on a Saturday, Ken and I would meet online (in a battle that others in the league could link to and watch) and I'd send nothing to ken at all nor get anything from him. We'd link our computers and start calling plays. At the end of the game, we'd have a game film and a result. Anyone who wasn't present could get a copy of the film. No chance to run multiple games, no alternate game runners, no spending 4 hours Friday night making sure my 2 point conversion gets called in the right circumstances. Just head-to-head matchups with real live trashtalk (over the phone, or through headsets tied to the game, or whatever) and real coaches matching wits, telling our players what to do. I can even imagine multiple people on either end, multiple coaches trying to come up with new plays from a series of playbooks, or making modifications to existing plays at halftime. Use your imaginiation, it could be really cool. What the heck, maybe playmaker could be suggesting plays for me BASED on the AI, but I could override, or not.

I would still need my players to execute, and fumbles, interceptions and random chance would all be part of the game. But in the end, any bad result would be mine alone. I could make one massive playbook at the beginning of the season, and never mess with it again if I wanted. Each game would still be totally different depending on the mood I was in and the team I played.

Right now I am in no leagues, because I grew tired of the eons of time I spent just making sure my playbook called the plays at the right time. This involved hours upon hours of watching my playbook until it failed, and very little of the actual 'fun' part I joined the leagues to get. My dad and I bought this game back in 1990 (or perhaps earlier) because we wanted to play against each other. We used to do that, in person, when i could be at his house regularly. I could do it now also, over the net, if we had this ability.

In my own, not so humble opinion, any other modifications are completely missing the boat. This one thing cannot really be done by any other program. PMFB is very close, but you guys are spending your time in the wrong place. I've wanted live net play since I first saw this game what has to be over 15 years ago.

Give it to me baby. Leave the AI in there for those who like that, but give me this or give me nothing.

What you're suggesting can be done with LiveMeeting, GoToMeeting or some such software and a video-capture suite like Camtasia. It would be good if Brian would look at it as a feature within the program, especially considering you can play such things as Unreal H2H online but I'd argue that the game would be worth 40 bucks at that point.

By the way, first time poster, newb player, no league affiliation.. (how often do you see that?)

Thanks for posting that Bo..Ã‚Â Ã‚Â I would have liked a more finished product up for review. :)Ã‚Â That's not the best possible work in fact, it's quite crap compared to what I've put together for other hobbies.

What that link shows is a recorded game played via standard playbook v. playbook format.Ã‚Â The frame rate and such is low to keep the file size down.Ã‚Â What the recorder doesn't show is two players playing live.Ã‚Â That will come soon and hopefully in a pro format I can be happy with.

If I can get the file size down enough you may also see sound play by play.Ã‚Â The best thing though is once I get this perfected, you'd be able to see a league where distribution of playbooks isn't needed.Ã‚Â Coaches could watch their games and have to develop scouting skills instead of having the ability to run countless games against another team (which is not realistic).Ã‚Â The LO or designated game runner would have them, but that's it.

The side benefit of this is you'd be able to see one playbook last a lot longer without need for insane amounts of modification week to week, because the other coaches wouldn't have the ability to run mock games.

Al

PS. I'll be taking down that file at some point over the weekend as A. It's not that great, B. It will eat bandwidth if people watch it millions of times, and C. I'd like to keep the technology low key until I perfect it. Then I'll gladly share a tutorial and some open source software that doesn't cost several hundred dollars to do it.

I have to agree with d'Abricots and mozart24. I do not think live play calling should be on the top of the list of changes to PMFB. My approach to this game is to view it as a question of how well I can tweak my PB's AI to account for every possibility. Putting the live play call option would lead to laziness, IMO. I mean, why have so many varieties of 2min drills and goalLine plays if you can just have a few and call them in from the sidelines?

I would much rather have the programmers spend their time on improving the software to the point that silly things -which are not illegal IRL football games- are adjusted for by the AI: things like (a) 5 receiver sets with the HB and FB on the outside (shouldn't the defence then swtich from a planned zone to coverM2M), (b) allowing for multiple plays called from scrimmage depending on the defence alignment (if the QB "sees" two deep backs-at 20 y from scrimmage, the play should then be changed from a deep pass to a run).

In short, rather than live play calls, I would rather have audibles (both for offence and defence) based on the formation presented.

Great defensive plays can cover a lot of different looks from offenses. Playing a cover-2 or playing 5 guys in m2m will ensure that no player is able to sneak downfield without 1 player at least trying to cover him.

We need live play calling. I was excited to play in a league till I found out about ai
I assumed it would be just like playing te CPU teams like the badmen not making alb and looking at some transcript I don't wanna play till wecan do love playcalling